


to the dark and empty skies

by puckity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Loki (Marvel), Canon Compliant, Comeplay, Implied Past and Current Casual Poly Encounters, Intercrural Sex, Jealousy, Jotunn-ish Loki, Light Bondage, Lightening Play, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Mutual Pining, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest, Thorki Valentine's Exchange 2018, first time in a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 12:25:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13681635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: Thor said: “If you were here, I might even give you a hug”—and then he walked away.It was all downhill from there.





	to the dark and empty skies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [lityousei](http://lityousei.tumblr.com/) over at the [2018 Thorki Valentine's Day Exchange](https://thorkievents.tumblr.com/)! I got three incredible prompts that were right up my alley:
> 
> _**1.** Bottom Loki and orgasm denial, preferable after Ragnarok while they are inside the spaceship._   
>  _**2.** Anything with top Thor using his lightning power to pleasure his brother. _   
>  _**3.** Morning cuddles with Jotun Loki._
> 
> Because I'm a mess—and because I'm still grappling with the gut-punch of new ship feels that I walked out of _Ragnarok_ with—this little story became a manifesto featuring all three of these ideas Frankenstein-ed together! I hope this was (sort of) what you were looking for!
> 
> Beta'd by the long-suffering [Rachel](http://betterwithsparkles.tumblr.com/).
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/), if you'd like!

“If you were here, I might even give you a hug.” Thor said it like a joke worn thin, threadbare and tight at the seams.

Loki almost— _almost_ —let the stopper fly past him and crack against the wall. Almost let Thor prove himself right, almost dragged it out a little longer between them.

The cheap shellacked plastic smacked in the center of his palm and it was a choice—a decision—one Loki couldn’t quite recall making. “I’m here.”

Thor’s smile carved his face open, dug out furrows that Loki didn’t recognize. He could have mapped out the planes and angles of his brother’s face once, centuries of lines memorized without a fixed plan. A reflex kicked up: Loki had always tried to catalog what was Thor’s and what was his.

What was theirs.

A decade—less, even—was half a breath on Asgard. A pause between sentences. And yet, between them now, ten ( _no, eight_ ) years struck like a broadsword that cleaved a shared millennium in half. The ties fluttered, scattered into a void that Loki had told himself time and again had always been there. A void that Odin had set them upon from their false twin births, a void they had trampled and grappled and clattered across in their youth without a thought for its fragility. A void that Loki had _rightfully_ exposed, but not one he had created. Not one he had continued to tear at with his bare hands, ripping jagged pieces off and drowning them in the darkness.

The void, this vast stretch of pain and poison between them, was not Loki’s doing. It was not, was not, _was not_.

Loki dropped the decanter stopper onto the nearest ledge, freeing his hands to be better occupied. It was a signal or an invitation or a request, or just an action without an intention. Loki would see how Thor countered it and find his motivation later.

Thor let his half-filled tumbler—carved out of Gramosian glass, by the looks of it—clink back onto the narrow liquor stand. His eyes— _eye: singular_ , and a sightless patch with gold spun into it—shifted to the strange, shaggy floor covering but his smile remained. He stood for a few bundled seconds, swaying with the drift of the ship, and then crossed the room. The footfall was heavy, weighted and purposeful and Loki’s spine went rigid.

It had been years since his brother had walked towards him like that.

Thor stopped just short of _too close_ , allowed enough distance between them to be thoroughly respectable should any one of his— _their_ ; though that still tasted chalky on Loki’s tongue—people wander past the open door. A hand, warm and loose, fell on Loki’s shoulder. He looked between the singed knuckles and the profile his brother’s face cut out against the harsh mechanical light.

“Indeed, you are.” The hand squeezed short and perfunctory; Thor wasn’t looking at him.

Loki had a response—a sharp, bitter retort or a smug, disarming jab—but it stuck garbled in his throat. His fingers twitched for something: a cold knife, a spark of seiðr, the pulse of blood and muscles caught just under the skin…

But Thor was moving again, slow as though he dragged a collection of burdens behind him. He was moving away from Loki, out the doorway and into his kingdom of metal corridors, unlacing their void as he left.

\---

It did not bother Loki.

He was curious, certainly—he’d even admit to being mildly perplexed. Thor had always been stripped raw and to the bone, throwing himself into things without pretense or guile and practically leaving breadcrumbs to follow in his wake. Loki could have set his schemes by Thor’s reactions, used to hear every note before he plucked it from his brother. Once, Thor and the shards of whatever their bond was had been the standard against which he could sow his chaos.

_Dear brother, you’re becoming predictable._

No, Loki was not bothered. He was irritated, annoyed that Thor had managed to learn cunning in his absence. That he could not parse his brother’s meaning—could not unravel his intentions—ground along his bones; he snapped wisps of (mostly) harmless spell work at anyone who came to him with matters he deemed exceedingly insipid or who prostrated themselves too exaggeratedly in his presence. The magic roped weak when he was alone, but when Thor was within sight Loki let it sting a little. Occasionally, his brother would toss him a watery sort of disapproving glance—an afterthought—but most times Thor did not even look back.

He was busy, wrapped up in the responsibilities of being king. That cloak had begun to strangle Loki—before Thor had sauntered back into Asgard and cracked the crown off his head with Mjolnir—but Thor seemed to wear it better.

_Of course he does_ —the voice that whispered from the back of his mind had long since sounded like a growl of gravel over ice— _it is his birthright._

Thor was busy, but not too busy so as to limit his engagements to strictly public ones. Not so busy that he kept to his own bed every night, nor so busy that he prioritized sleep over whatever lay behind the Valkyrie’s or Heimdall’s or—and may the Æsir forgive him for it—the beast-who-had-swallowed-Bruce’s chamber doors. He didn’t even have the decency to look abashed when Loki passed him leaving their rooms before the morning deck lights went up; not that Loki caught him every morning or that he was trying to catch him at all. Only, he felt that Thor should at least feign a bit of embarrassment at tumbling out of one of his subject’s rooms like he was still 700 years old and boasting of his conquests.

But his brother could do as he liked: he could bed every last grown member of their patchwork colony that would have him, he could barrel towards Earth with nothing more than a plea and the quivering look that used to get him an extra bowl of snow pudding from the palace cooks, he could cloister Loki away in hopes of avoiding conflict or latch Loki to him so that he would not stray or pay Loki as much mind as he would a young child clamoring at his heels for attention.

Thor would be Thor, just as Loki would be Loki. And Loki did not care, one way or the other.

\---

It started with the cracks on his back, branching out from where Thor had clapped the obedience disk onto his shoulder before leaving him ( _again_ ) to contort in spasms on that hangar floor. After that, Loki had been more concerned with deactivating it and putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Grandmaster’s melt stick than with actually assessing the damage. Then there was the whole drowning-Asgard-in-the-flames-of-Ragnarok bit and by the time Loki had half a moment to do anything more than brace the seiðr stitches holding him together it had spread. Flakes of skin soaked in the Allfather’s grace shed onto the floor; beneath it, Loki ran blue-hued and etched with Jötunn markings.

His magic flared wilder now too, and a chill wove through it. Loki kept his collars high and his spells simple. Once or twice—as he had stared out into the blinking black of space—he wondered if perhaps Thor had felt it too. Perhaps the frost had crept across his shoulders and bit at Thor’s fingers, perhaps that was why he had let go. Why he had not reached out again. Perhaps—

But it did not serve to dwell upon it.

Loki spent his time—or at least the portion of it he had allotted to being useful—indexing the structure of this New Asgard, identifying its strengths and weaknesses. So that he could leverage it, barter with it, undermine and betray it eventually.

So that he could offer something of value should his brother ever seek out his counsel.

He took note of Thor’s schedules, of whom he met with and to what ends. He had not been expressly forbidden to attend, so once in a while Loki sat in on what always proved to be insufferably long and tedious council meetings. His only consolation was that—although he tried to hide it behind his eyepatch—Loki knew by the slump of his shoulders and the fidgeting of his legs that Thor was just as bored as he was.

Outside of official business, Loki tried not to pry. It was easy enough since Thor spent most of the time—excluding meals and his nighttime activities—in the Arena. The largest cargo bay on the Statesman had been hastily repurposed as a collective space for sparring, training, and general rough-housing (particularly among the younger citizens) with a mess of makeshift weapons and obstacles already full of gashes and dents. It had been suggested as a preparatory tool for the survivors—to ensure that they remained ready to defend themselves against the not-inconsiderable risk of further attacks—but after the first few day cycles it devolved into a more haphazard thing, somewhere their people could go to vent their rage and grief or to recoup some enjoyment or just to break up the monotony of spaceship time. Thor visited daily as king to offer a few rounds with the warriors and a few games with the children, but also slipped in when the lights dimmed and the people had scattered back to their own cramped quarters.

Loki let him be; even the mighty Thor deserved a few moments to himself every now and then. But when he left Loki would linger, smell the crackle of electricity and the singe of ozone still clinging to the air and feel an echo rise within him, unsure if it came from the Asgardian fitting Odin had locked him in or the storms of Jötunheim that beat below.

\---

“You know, for the God of Mischief I would’ve thought you’d have a better poker face.” The Valkyrie— _Brunnhilde_ , slurred after her fifth bottle of fermented Skrull alcohol during a jaunt through an exceptionally bumpy asteroid field—poked at his arm, left an impression in the smooth lining.

Loki brushed out the crease. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll bet you do.” She paused for effect. After an awkward beat, she rolled her eyes. “It means being able to keep your feelings off your face, your majesty. The phrase comes from this Midgardian card game—”

“I know what poker is, thank you.” Loki held his tone even; they had not yet developed a casual rapport and a Valkyrie was trained to keep her talons at the ready. “What I meant was: why would you think I don’t have a good poker face?”

The Valkyrie tipped her head, narrowed her eyes. “Are you joking?”

Loki let his lips stretch thin with a smirk. “I thought I was practically _transparent_ to you.”

“Yeah, well.” She smiled, flashed her teeth at him. “Not all of us are as aggressively oblivious as our new king.”

“Thor?” Loki blinked, broke eye contact and focused on the crates and supply kits being pried open for inspection and inventory on the other side of the room. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“I wonder.”

Her words were honeyed and laced with thorned insinuations. It was a tone Loki knew well—a mimicry spun back at him—and something bright and vicious clapped against the base of his skull.

“Well, I’m sure you can share all your theories about me the next time he crawls into your bedsheets.” Loki spoke fast and brutal, like a dagger to the throat, and even he was surprised by how much blood he hoped to draw.

For an instant everything went still as stone; Loki could feel the tip of the Dragonfang pressing in just below his ribs, though the Valkyrie’s hands were still empty.

Then she leaned in, one eyebrow arched. “You’re right—I could do that.”

Loki braced his arms tighter across his chest.

She pitched her voice low. “And then you could continue skulking about like a pathetic, heartsick little Xandarian weasel. It is—of course—your choice, _highness_.”

A stack of preserved food stores toppled in the corner, clattering along the metal floors. Loki glanced over, only half-distracted, while Brunnhilde pushed past him. She strode towards the volunteer inspectors with certainty, chided them with gentle authority, helped them to reorder themselves. She was—with this, and all else—sure of her place and committed to her purpose.

Behind her Loki wavered, and the clap of brightness waned sour and dull.

\---

Thor picked at the rim of his eyepatch, scratched a fingernail under it once in a while. He would feign an adjustment—as though the healers’ seal had started to slip—or hastily move to his ear or the shaggy fringe of his hairline. If he thought no one was looking, he would rub a bit more vigorously. But Loki was always looking, always saw, and a phantom itch began to form along his cheekbone.

Someone else—one of the remaining High Healers, no doubt—had worked to contain the eyeless gash that their sister had gifted Thor before Loki had the chance to get to him. Before he had latched the Commodore atop their floating refugee camp, before he had hesitated—hovering at the edge of Asgard’s decimation with limitless power tucked into the seiðr-laced folds of his suit and the expanse of an entire universe to weave mischief through—in his resolve to knock his brother off his steady footing once more. In the minutes (or hours) that he had wasted, someone else had drained the poison from Thor’s wound and set him to right as—centuries ago—Loki would have done.

Centuries ago, there would not have been someone else. There would not have been even the whispered half-thought of someone else, of someone who was not him.

The phantom itch grew, settled into Loki’s skin like rot, and every time Thor reached for his patch it throbbed.

He had offered—tossed it out as though it was an aggravation more to himself than it was to Thor—to assess it. To see if Frigga’s magic could root out something that had been left behind, something only mostly eradicated that continued to spread its decay within Thor. To make sure that their king was not sailing them on with a bomb ticking inside his head.

Centuries ago, Thor would have clapped Loki on the shoulder and drawn him close, fingers crushing fondly into bone. He would have boasted that he needed no such assessment, that nothing so fickle as magic could incapacitate him. He would have goaded Loki about his delicate trickery, about slender wrists and soft palms, and then punched his way through five dozen more of their foes until victory was assured. And then—after the battle and the feasting and the revelries—he would have found his way to Loki, would have stripped off his armor piece by piece until the damage was exposed. As Loki worked, he would have retold of their adventures across the realms or he would have cataloged all the other scars Loki had reseamed or (if he was particularly exhausted) he would have hummed something soft and wispy, like a lullaby they both shared.

Sometimes he would have lingered, cast in shadows against the pale candlelight. What passed between them would be just as when either of them lingered in another tent, kept intimate company with Hogun or Fandral or Volstagg or Sif or some other warrior whose name they had long since forgotten. It was a tradition of war, a renewal of the bonds of comradery. Thor and his friends teased amongst themselves who was the most wanton, who the loudest, who the most generous. They shared, as Asgardians did, without shame or jealousy but Loki—even then, Loki coveted.

That was how it would have been, centuries ago. But now Thor held his mouth in a firm line, smiled without mirth behind it. Now Thor shook his head and when he patted Loki’s shoulder his hand pulled away fast, as though the touch scalded him.

“I’m fine, brother. Truly.”

Loki shrugged, felt the heat of Thor’s hand soak in even after it was gone.

He did not ask again.

\---

Loki had never been one for confidences (his own; any weakness he could exploit in others was worth suffering through) but the half-hints he’d once dropped to Frigga or Volstagg or even Sif were left now to rattle inside him. In the smothering quiet of his room—unable to shut his eyes against the wailing of the cosmos that had festered in his mind since his fall into oblivion—ten thousand plans crystallized and shattered to pieces.

_Stay. Go. Ingratiate. Undermine. Counsel. Corrupt. Rebuild. Burn it to ashes._

_Reach out, or wait for something that may never come._

He had spurned Thor’s lead—bristled and torn himself against it—but without it, Loki found that he did not know where to follow.

The Hulk had no patience for small talk, and Brunnhilde had already shared her opinions. Heimdall, Loki suspected, saw more than he truly wanted to know. All things considered, it did leave him with somewhat limited options.

“How are you finding your accommodations?” Loki knocked against a doorless entryway. “Better, I trust, than the gladiatorial dungeon on Sakaar.”

“Yeah, man.” The Kronan who had—for the same reason as hundreds of warriors before him—decided to charge alongside his brother into death and destruction turned away from the lopsided mechanical frame he was tinkering with. “Any place where the circles are real circles is alright in my book.”

Loki nodded; he did not want to delve too deeply into this creature’s metaphors. “But you don’t wish to return to your Empire?

“Bit hard to do that after you organized a failed revolution. Besides, everyone I care about is here now.” Korg shifted and ground at the seams. “I mean, I guess my mum’s still out there…but she never came looking for me after I got captured, so that puts some things into perspective.”

“Still, you could strike out on your own. No ties, no obligations or debts holding you back.” Loki tapped a finger against a bolt head soldered into the wall.

“Caring’s not an obligation, bruv. At least, I don’t think it is.” Korg returned to the mechanical frame and began carefully folding its legs up. There was a seat at the top, lined with several layers of padded scrap fabric. “Why else would you do anything, if you didn’t care?”

Loki had a thousand answers for that, so many reasons above _caring_ that he could not sift through them fast enough, yet somehow each one he shuffled past seemed insufficient. There were volumes—tomes—full of reasons…only, he couldn’t find one to refute with just now.

Korg stood, the jagged tip of his head nearly scraping against the ceiling, and rambled on as though he had not expected a response. “Besides, the Empire would never allow a Kronan-Native mateship and I couldn’t just leave Miek behind. Not after I almost stomped him to death on that fancy glass bridge of yours.”

Loki glanced between Korg and the rickety folded frame he’d left propped against the base of a low chair. “That’s a fair point, I suppose. Or a point, at any rate.”

The strange opening in the middle of the Kronan’s face—like pebbles sealed over wide lips—cracked up at the corners, and it somehow seemed closer to a smile than what split open Loki’s mouth these days. “Why thank you.”

\---

He had meant to go only to inquire about refueling, to see if the navigators had managed to agree on which planet was most likely to be both accessible and willing to strike a deal for a share of their meager resources. He knew that Heimdall kept his watch until all the decks went dark and that the Valkyrie and the Hulk were securing the weapon reserves, knew that Thor was not in the cavernous meal hall or the Arena.

He knew that the gears of this ship—the gears of this colony—turned in time whether he checked on them or not. Knew that he was a piece of it, but only one cog among many—the machine would still run in his absence.

So Loki had meant to go only to say goodbye. Or he had not meant to go at all, but instead intended to walk past on his way to slip out through a ventilation shaft. The Commodore could get him to an inhabited outpost at least, and he could manage the rest.

Loki had meant—but Thor sat against the wide window, head in his hands, the curve of his back outlined in stars and Loki no longer knew what he had meant. No longer knew if he had meant anything in the first place.

A litany of words built behind Loki’s teeth but what came out was: “Brother.”

Thor raised his head; his eye was dry but dim, fogged over with troubles that he had been keeping from Loki.

He did not wonder at Thor’s secrecy, nor was he offended by his distrust. In their youth, Thor had been resistant to the strict lessons of their tutors but it seemed that he had taken Loki’s recent teachings to heart. He was not upset by Thor’s guardedness—his brother had to learn, sooner or later, the costs of an easy trust—but the pain knotted around him was palpable. The force of it squeezed Loki’s neck; he tried not to choke on it.

“Are you ill?” There was a shudder in Loki’s voice that was only half-affected.

Thor chuckled, a brittle and coarse thing. “I’m tired. The days are long here, although we don’t have a sun to set them by. I understand now why Father retreated into the Odinsleep—I’ve only been doing this for a month or so, and already I wouldn’t mind a hibernating respite.”

“Yet you have taken to it well.” Loki had not meant this—had not meant to offer his brother compliments, and genuine ones besides. He amended, but could not find it in him to rescind. “Or well enough, for a months-old king.”

“Yes, it’s not like I had a millennium to prepare for this.” Thor cracked out his knuckles.

Loki shrugged. “I cannot speak to the efficacy of our training. Clearly.”

Thor looked at him. He watched Loki— _regarded_ him—and though Loki knew he had words to speak he kept his mouth pressed thin and tight. Something pinched above the bridge of Loki’s nose, dug in like claws filed to a point. Thor could have his undisturbed secrets, but that he held back even when Loki gave an opening—it grated against him like a thousand scraped knees gained climbing the amber trees in the palace orchards. More than that, Thor’s gaze seemed to gather knowledge he chose not to share, as though he could now read Loki better than Loki could read him.

The idea was laughable, absurd.

Infuriating.

“Well then, if you and the rest of your subjects are faring _well enough_ , I can see no reason for me to stay and continue to interfere.” Loki regretted the threat before he had bitten off the end of it, but knew that—if the ultimatum was given—he would go through with it rather than recant.

Thor blinked but his expression did not shift. He nodded slow. “If you wish to, I hope that your journey will be safe.”

Loki’s tongue soaked in acid. “What, no rousing speech on the merits of keeping the Asgardian royal line intact? No lectures on valor and honor? No appeals to our false brotherhood? You are a changed Thor indeed.”

“When have you ever been won over by such things? When have you bent your will to the pleas of others?” Thor’s tone hit like steel, cold and hard but reverberating with a force beneath. “You and I both know that Loki will do as he wishes.”

“And now that Thor is king, he sees me for what I am.” Loki sneered, stepped into the room when he should have been storming out. “He knows how to _handle_ me.”

Thor’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “That is a lesson you taught me, brother, many times over and long before I took the throne.”

Loki ground his teeth—Thor was right, but damn him for being so. That he could not trust Loki, that he no longer sought his consul or shared his burdens, that he was king and Loki was not—these were all Loki’s doings. That he did not seek comfort in Loki, that he had found other arms to fall into—these too were things Loki had taught Thor himself. And yet…

“I did.” Loki’s eyes—traitors that they were—rimmed wet. “But you never retained it until now.”

Thor pushed off from the window, stood abrupt and rigid, as though his body had reacted before his mind could catch it. He flexed his hands into fists then dropped them loose again.

“What do you want, Loki? Now that Father is gone and Asgard is extinguished, now that the world is burned and you can go anywhere and do anything—what would you do?”

Loki felt an answer—knew there was a truth in the hollow, hungry clench in his chest—but he could not shake it loose, could not pull it out and face it directly.

“Your wound seeps with infection, yet you will not let me heal it.”

If Thor was confused by the change of subject, he did not show it. “The High Healers have done their work. They said that it would take time for the toxins to diminish, and if I undermine the last of our Eir-trained the people will doubt their abilities in the future.”

“So you would let Hela’s vicious magic take root in you rather than get a second opinion.” Loki scoffed but it could not disguise the crack in his voice. His eyes narrowed. “Or is it more than that? Perhaps you cannot suffer through even the mild touches of my professional magic?”

Thor’s stoic mask slipped; he tilted his head and crossed his thick arms across his breastplate. “What are you talking about?”

Loki’s lips twisted; all the humor wrung out of them. “How many private calls have you made to your subjects’ chambers? The guardian, the valkyrie, even that irradiated abomination that consumed your precious Dr. Banner. And beyond that, how many? And how many more to come?”

Thor’s eyebrows threaded together. “You know the customs of Asgard—these are not transgressions, nor are they unexpected from any except those among us who have made exclusive vows.” A pause, then he added in a lower tone: “I think that it has not been so long that you’ve forgotten your own habits here, brother.”

“No indeed, _brother_ , I have not forgotten. I have not forgotten that my chambers were once the first you knocked upon, and sometimes the only. Yet now I am not even an afterthought.” Loki bared his teeth. “Is it that Thor will bed his brother, but not a Jötunn?”

Thor took a step closer. “I have done both many times over. As often as I have had you, since you have always been the two combined.”

“Then maybe it is a treasonous villain you deny, as I was only made such after your banishment.” Loki turned his viper bite upon himself, knew that the cruelest blades were dual-edged. He had learned lessons too, exiled at the ends of the sane universe.

“Are you a treasonous villain, Loki?” Thor’s voice snapped loud; an electric crackle charred the air.

Loki tasted power in the charged molecules that spun him dizzy and delirious.

“I—I don’t know! I don’t know if I will wake tomorrow with a desire to itemize the trading stock or to overtake the controls and crash us into the next moon we come across. I don’t know if I will prove myself the hero you want or if—when we face our next obstacle—I will climb over the corpses of our people to save myself. I don’t—I don’t know if I can be who you want me to be, who you believe me to be, and I don’t know if all of this is proving you right or wrong and that is _maddening_.”

“Loki.” Thor’s arms fell to his sides, smooth and calm, but his skin still sizzled. “I don’t want you to be a hero, or for you to cut the chaos out of yourself. In an earlier lifetime, maybe, but now—I just want you to turn your anger and resentment and spite to better use, if you can, whether that’s with me or not. I want you to build a purpose, and hopefully have it be one that won’t get you killed for playing the wrong trick at the wrong time on the wrong being.”

They were near enough now that Thor could touch him, could reach out and anchor them together if Loki had left anything between them still worth reaching for.

Thor glanced down at Loki’s feet. “And I want…wanted…my brother back. As he—as _you_ —are, not as I once imagined you to be.”

Bile settled in Loki’s throat, leaving his mouth bitter and dry. “Then why will you not share with me, not even a hug that you yourself offered unbidden? Why do you act as though my presence is as salt to your wounds, like I am one of the great burdens that weighs heavy upon your shoulders?”

“And are you not?” Thor looked up; the intensity of his gaze tore at Loki like the fangs of Fenrir. “I want you back, and you are here, but for how long? A month, six, a year, or ten…it doesn’t matter. You will leave because you are Loki and Loki is impermanent and arbitrary—and I have said that I would have you be you, and I would. But you have slipped through my fingers time and again; the tighter I have held you, the faster you have disappeared and left me behind. I have lost you to Father, to madness, to hatred and malice and death, to me and to yourself and I don’t know how else to keep you. I suspect there _is_ no way to keep you, so I will have you for as long as I can and know that that cannot be forever. But as I understand you, so too must you understand me: before all of this, I thought that we would be side by side—in battle, in court, in bed, and eventually in death—always. Whatever and whoever else we held in our lives, I thought we would be each other’s constants. I did not think of it much then, when I came to your rooms or you came to mine, but now I know that if I hold you again—even in a brotherly embrace—I will not be able to let you go.”

Thor’s chest heaved as though he had just shouted a rallying cry with the odds fully stacked against him, and Loki found that his own lungs had gone small too.

A quiet moment came and went; Thor sighed. “I’m sorry that I offered you something I could not give, and that you felt slighted by it.”

“Slighted?” Loki laughed and it came out strangled and straining against hysterical. “I wasn’t _slighted_. I was—I was desperate. I was ready to do something hideous and scandalizing, only I couldn’t think of what would be _enough_. I was ready to slit your throat as you slept or throw myself out of an airlock or—”

“Isn’t that a little melodramatic, brother?”

The corners of Thor’s lips hitched up, wrinkles that had not always been there branched out from the edge of his eye, and that murky truth within Loki lurched. He took hold of it, grabbed it by its neck and raised it from its depths and finally, finally saw it.

“I was _aching_ , Thor. I _am_ aching—and so are you.” He held his hands out, palms up. “I cannot make promises, and you would see through them now anyway. But for what it’s worth, I did it for you. Always, everything—even what I did for Mother and Father and myself, I still did for you. And I don’t know if I will stay or go, but you must know by now that I will never leave you— _can_ never leave you—not really, because I am…I need…”

Loki gagged on his unraveling honesty, suffocated it against the hard ridges of Thor’s armor before he realized that he had been pulled into an embrace. It was an effective manipulation in hindsight, one that had managed to get him exactly what he had claimed to want—more than just cursory contact from his brother—even as Thor had protested that it was something he could no longer give. Loki would tell himself later that this had all been an astute ruse and ignore the frigid echo that suggested otherwise.

Compared with his brother, Loki (and any other being save trolls and rock monsters and Hulks) appeared to be little more than skin stretched over bones. But he had firm, lean muscles and stood eye to eye with Thor and—for all the taunts about magic over might—he had bested his brother in combat and in brawls, clean or otherwise, so he should certainly be able to hold his own in an overdue hug. And unlike most everyone else (including—it would seem—rock monsters and Hulks) Loki was not automatically overwhelmed by Thor’s glistening biceps or the wide warm wall of his chest. In fact, he would usually resist on principle alone as proof that he was lesser neither through weakness nor delicacy—that he was a matched equal.

But now, for half a half-moment, he allowed his brother to hold him captive. Allowed him to constrain Loki’s shoulders and waist, to crush him in so tight that it hurt—that it was pain above pleasure, as it had ever been between them. He allowed Thor the space of an exhale to overpower him, to wrap all of his power around Loki and seize at him like a possession. As though—if Loki could be owned—it would be by no one but Thor.

That thought pinched at him, itched at his palms. The faint outline of something that he could stab into his brother’s back gathered between his fingers then dissipated; instead, Loki pressed his hands flat along the curve of Thor’s spine. He breathed in the sweat and dirt that—no matter how many times the palace attendants had scrubbed and waxed it—burrowed into Thor’s battle suit; there was the stench of smoke now too, the embers of Surtur’s great vengeance. Beneath the leather, his brother smelled of well-aged mead and green grass plains in the swell before a storm. Loki closed his eyes, tried to recall the last time he had been close enough to catch the scent of rain on Thor’s skin. It had been decades, centuries, ages.

He clung tighter, squeezed at Thor’s back plate as though his fingers could splinter through it.

This proximity, this nearness that Loki had been deprived of (had deprived himself of) for so long, jarred something else loose within him. A childish fancy—something Loki had left behind in the soft, foolish whims of a young and naïve mind so wholly unprepared for the indifference of fate. A memory that Loki had been hardened too even as their habit of sharing each other’s bodies grew through their rollicking quests, for that too had been a tradition more than anything else. Convenience, familiarity, _proximity_ more than pure and singular desire.

But once—under the shimmering leaves of the amber trees—a golden boy, beardless and fleshy in his arms and around his waist, had tipped forward and kissed Loki. Kissed a sullen, wiry boy who poked at him and insulted him and adored him—his bright, beautiful brother. That boy had kissed him gentle, tasted of Asgardian sweetfruit and summer showers and Loki had loved him then. Loved him for ages before then, but knew it that day under those branches and that endless crystal sky.

Here, now—in a different millennium, a different life—Thor started to pull away.

Loki dug his nails into the joints of the armor and kept his chin hooked over Thor’s shoulder. “Liar.”

“What?” Thor’s arms had gone slack; he stiffened as though it was him who was now trapped.

“You said that you would not let me go.” Loki spoke against the line of Thor’s pulse; static hissed between the tip of his tongue and the overgrown hairs at the edge of Thor’s beard.

Thor stilled, suddenly solid and immovable as a marble-cast statue.

“I’ve gained some self-control since we last stood like this.” He growled into the waves of Loki’s hair, deep and warning. “But not much.”

Loki followed the singe to the shell of Thor’s ear and swallowed the sparks. “Good.”

There was a rush of movement and Loki did not have the chance to miss Thor’s arms around him before a palm smacked in the middle of his chest and shoved him back. He hit the wall behind him—the chamber door, shut but not locked. Thor crossed the space, two big steps without even half a pause; he grabbed Loki by the arms and spun him around until his ribs cracked against the metal. There was no room for his head, no comfortable way to face the solder and bolts, so he craned his neck to the side and pressed his right ear to the scarring of rust and grime.

Thor crowded him, sealed Loki off from everything but the hum of their new world and himself. He wound one hand into a fistful of Loki’s hair and yanked, exposing the thin strip of skin between his collar and his hairline. Loki felt the ghost of Thor’s lips, puffs of hot air searing in patches but no decisive touch. He pushed back, contorted himself any way that he could to stop Thor from toying with him. The thick line of Thor’s cock caught in the dip between Loki’s thighs; Thor widened his stance and bracketed Loki’s legs with his own.

Loki twisted his shoulders, tried to gain leverage but Thor would not surrender even a squirm to him.

“Well, I’m glad that I stopped wearing my cape outside of council meetings.”

“Hm.” Thor’s fingers worked their way under the hem of Loki’s doublet, ran along it in search of its hidden fastenings.

“I can—” Loki flicked his wrist, alight with glimmers of green. “It would be much faster…and I know how impatient you can be, brother.”

“No.” Thor clapped his hand over Loki’s, extinguished the seiðr against the door. “No tricks, no shortcuts, not this time.”

A chill cut through Loki, sliced from his throat to the base of his gut. _I would have you be you_ , Thor had said.

“I said so, and I’ll say again.”

Loki had not realized that he had spoken aloud, wondered if he actually had or if Thor had been hearing the same echoes as him.

“I would have you be you, Loki. Trickster, warrior, seiðmaðr, prince. My dearest friend, my bitterest foe. My brother.” Thor laced their fingers together with one hand, while the other found the seam hooks and began snapping the doublet open from waist to collarbone. “And if you stay, I would have you anywhere. _Everywhere_. I would have you laid upon the softest sheets aboard this ship or flush against the widest window or drunk on the many pleasures I know your magic can concoct, and the many more I’m sure I can only guess at. I would have you at all hours, visit you so often that you would curse having ever rekindled this flame and lighting us both with it. I would have you have me any way— _every_ way—you want: fighting against my bindings or on my knees before you, above or below you, taking or taken from. Then I would have us not be satisfied until we’ve matched all the stars in all the galaxies for quantity, and even then be left craving more.”

The shirt hung open now and Thor peeled it over Loki’s shoulder. It dragged down inch by inch, tangling Loki’s arm in the sleeve, but at the crest of his shoulder blade Thor paused.

Loki remembered—too late—the shedding of Odin’s magic and the scales of frost left exposed by it.

“Are you sure you don’t want a bit of magic, just to keep up appearances?”

He waited for Thor’s concession, tinged with an in-born Asgardian disgust. Waited to fix all his cracks and remind his brother of what he had once lusted after, pale and smooth and cool in the moonlight. Waited—but Thor gave no answer other than his lips on Loki’s skin, kissing along the fractures and tracing the foreign markings with his teeth.

“I would have you be you.” He murmured across the ridges of Loki’s back, twitching his hips forward. “But today I would do this without aid. I would feel every part of it, long after it has ended, and I would have you feel it too.”

Loki shuddered sudden as a gust of wind running through a barley field. He had not remembered, had not anticipated—but if he had it would have been for jests dulled of their points, or perhaps some of Thor’s newfound solemn respectability. He would have imagined his brother apologizing or staying silent, touches skirting only the ends of the blue tendrils. Imagined something, anything, but not this.

Thor left wet, messy trails in his wake. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” Loki nearly swallowed the word as Thor found the scar left by the obedience disk and bit down.

Leather slid over Loki’s other shoulder; Thor released his hand from against the gritty metal and pulled it back with the sleeve. He worked the shirt down to just above Loki’s elbows then stopped and tied the flaps into a knot, tangling Loki’s arms behind his back. It was a sloppy restraint—hardly a restraint at all—but Loki only offered a few token tugs against it.

This was an old game—Thor giving him things he needed but would not ask for—and Loki let him play this round.

“Really? I could free myself before you even have the chance to get your cock out.” Loki stretched his fingers and dragged a nail up the bulge in Thor’s breeches.

The scruff of Thor’s beard rubbed along the crook of Loki’s neck. “Then do it.”

Eons and lightyears ago, it would have been a challenge. Thor would have pulled back, just out of reach, and Loki would have seethed at the insinuation that this was just one more skewed test to prove his brother’s superiority. Before he would have done it and Thor would have let him, but now Thor’s rough palms pushed from low on his back to the soft lines of his stomach and settled under the grooves of his ribs. Now Thor drew him in and Loki followed.

Thor traced the seam of Loki’s leggings; he found the fastenings easier than he had with the others, probably because they were larger and less concealed. He snapped them open one by one, pausing to let Loki shiver with each exposed inch. When he was done, Thor hooked his thumbs under the waistband and dragged it down to Loki’s knees; he left it bunched there, kept Loki’s legs from being able to spread quite as wide as they wanted to. His fingertips lingered inside the curve of Loki’s long thighs and the fine hairs that wisped across Loki’s skin began to stand on end.

The whisper between their bodies was charged now, crackling with energy begging to be siphoned off. Loki could feel the sparks where they danced up and down Thor’s fingers; every few seconds they jumped the space to Loki’s skin and back again.

It stung like a dozen pins pricking over and over, the pain gone before Loki could grasp it. Before he could seize it and reshape it to his own purposes. It left everything alight like the blue of a flame, numb with overstimulation.

“I once envied your magic, Loki.” Thor ran his teeth along the sinewed cords of Loki’s neck but applied no more pressure there than he did against Loki’s thighs.

Loki smothered a whine deep in his throat. “You hid it well then, for I seem to recall the frequent assertions that the value of my tricks was akin to their weight in your hands—namely, nothing.”

Thor spread his palms—rubbed his thumbs over Loki’s hipbones—and latticed two hand-wide fields of lightening across Loki’s skin. “That was because I had no talent for it, or at least none to match yours.”

From his first glimpse of it at the Contest of Champions, Loki recognized the lightening that surged out of his brother to be a pair with his own powers. He had wanted to bottle it for study or steal it to weave into his seiðr. He had wanted to feel the shock of it through his bones, had wanted to taste its sizzle on the back of his tongue. He should have been enraged, infuriated that Thor had taken yet another thing that was his and molded it to be even more glorious. He should have felt overshadowed, swallowed up by the death shades of Odin and cast once more into the darkness by Thor. He should—

Yet all Loki felt was hunger, an ache in the curls of his spells and a squeeze in his lungs at the unfiltered power of Thor’s elemental bursts. The shocks dragged up his chest, hissed over his nipples and settled to a simmer just below his left collarbone.

_What silly sentimentality_ , Loki thought between the rattles of electricity in his veins. _Asgardian double hearts beat in the center of their chests, and who knows where the heart of a_ _Jötunn_ _lies?_

“What of my technique, brother?” The delicate lacing reeled back in to Thor’s fingertips and he circled the edge of one dark, gravel-hard nipple. “I know that it lacks your more experienced finesse, but I believe that my skills have improved.”

Loki was harder than he had been in ages, diamond-stiff in his joints and shaking soft like a dying leaf still clinging to its branch. He preferred to remain aloof with those whose beds he graced, preferred to retain an air of mystery and composure no matter the venue. He took his pleasure, of course, and played to his audience as best as he could; Loki had always felt that it was outrageous the sorts of things that some beings were only too eager to reveal in the throes of passion and—as he had been gifted with a talent for persuasion—it seemed wasteful not to use it to its full potential. So he gasped and sighed and wailed and quaked to his ends, but there were always ends. Because what could be gained from simply falling apart—what could be achieved from exposing oneself like that?

Thor had never subscribed to that philosophy, and Loki supposed that his own habits must have been picked up after their early mutual education because then—just as now, just as always—Thor had pulled at one thread and unraveled Loki entirely.

“I have been practicing, when I can. It helps with…all of this, I suppose.” Thor nosed into Loki’s hair, sweat-damp and frizzed with curls. He kept one hand on Loki’s chest and trailed the other down. “Perhaps you could come like this, with as little of me intruding as possible.”

Something jagged snared in Loki’s throat, tore out of his mouth garbled between a laugh and a groan. His hips bucked—rutted against the stale ship air—as he felt the bottom of his stomach begin to drop out.

The lightening sputtered and Thor’s hand hooked low; he grabbed Loki’s cock by the base and squeezed tight.

“Perhaps you could.” He kept the pressure firm, just enough to force back the tide of Loki’s orgasm. “But not yet.”

For a moment, Loki froze.

Then he raged: thrashed his arms—trying to burst the leather seams—and stomped his heels, hoping to catch a few of Thor’s toes and grind them into the reinforced floor. He screamed but it broke to pieces against the thick panels of the door.

“ _Tyrant_.” Loki spat it like venom.

Behind him, Thor chuckled. He held Loki fast, rubbed a loose pattern under Loki’s clavicle with the pad of his thumb. “I said _yet_ , not _ever_. Besides, would you want something so easily won? Would that satisfy you?”

Loki huffed, punched back with his fists once for good measure. “ _This_ is easily won? What did this cost us, then? My heritage, your freedom. My birthright, your companions. Our sister and mother and father. Our realm, our home. Yes, what a small price that was to pay for our satisfaction.”

“And your life.” Thor’s nails carved into Loki’s skin. “Would our satisfaction cost me you again, Loki?”

Loki stilled. The hook of Thor’s question—the same one he had posed when he said he could not touch Loki again, the same one that he had perhaps been asking for a great many years now—wormed beneath Loki’s flesh. He had ten thousand answers, or none at all.

“Perhaps it would.” Loki arched his spine and pushed himself long and slow along the angry ridge of Thor’s cock, still tied up behind his breeches. “Then again, I have never been one for satisfaction.”

Thor moaned, high and shallow and frayed at the ends. “Of course not. Why would I even suggest—”

“If you don’t stop talking—” Loki found one of the cords of Thor’s laces, held it between his knuckles and yanked. “—I will chew the tongue out of your mouth.”

Thor jerked Loki’s cock once, rough and sudden, while his other hand moved to work at the lacings. “I thought you appreciated a silver tongue.”

“Only when it is put to good use.” Loki nearly buckled with the release of pressure, with the slip of Thor’s palm over the sticky-wet head of his cock and the thick weight nudging between his legs.

This was familiar again, like memories from a fever dream. Thor would take pleasure for the both of them, would pound and bellow and fall apart and Loki could keep his dignity by contrast. He whispered something—a concept he’d once come across in reparative magic and modified to his own purposes—to ease the way. For efficiency’s sake, to give his brother some incentive to action.

But Thor did not thrust in. He settled instead between Loki’s thighs, slick tip prodding at the back of Loki’s taut balls.

“You don’t need to prepare me, Thor.” Loki flexed his muscles around his brother and felt the flutter against the rim of his hole.

“Don’t I?” Thor spoke slack, as though this were a conversation about bathrobes or intragalactic tariffs. He slid one finger along the cleft of Loki’s ass, circled his hole and smeared it with the lubrication that leaked out. “Oh, but Loki—I said no magic.”

“It’s not magic! It is a pragmatic convenience!” Loki’s body clenched, so eager to be filled that it set his teeth on edge. “And I swear by all the dishonored dead of Niflheim, if you don’t give me some relief—”

Thor pushed his finger in, past the resistance and into the slick heat. He wiggled it—tickled against all the spots save one—making sure not to scratch Loki’s itch. It was _something_ , but for how worked up Loki had gotten it was almost worse than being empty.

Loki rocked back, tried to force the whole of Thor’s hand inside. “Do not offer me placations, brother. Take what we both know you want—satisfy yourself.”

“I will.” Thor kissed beneath Loki’s jaw, low on Loki’s cheek. “But not today. Today I will be unsatisfied and so will you and we will continue on—tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that—being unsatisfied and together.”

Pride, discordance, self-preservation, fear—whatever had been holding Loki together crumbled, sifted like sand at this new Thor. A Thor who could not be tricked, not even by himself. A Thor grown out of their antagonistic cycles, one who could truly leave Loki behind now.

And yet, a Thor who chose not to.

“Alright.” It was a murmur, a concession wrung from the hollow clutch where Loki’s double hearts had once beat. “I yield.”

Thor crooked his finger, dragged it over the spot that made Loki jolt once and again. Then he withdrew, wiped the oil down his own cock and flattened his hands along the dip in Loki’s sides. The pressure was gentle—barely a suggestion—but Loki understood it. He squeezed his legs shut around Thor, felt the friction burn as he began to move in the space between Loki’s thighs.

The force that Thor had been keeping in check roiled in like a tempest on the horizon; Loki could hear the distant claps of thunder. Thor rutted brutal, had to slap one palm to the door just to keep them both upright. Loki’s knees bounced against the rusty plates as he began to splinter open and tumble out onto the lacquered tiles below them.

“I—can I…?” Loki closed his eyes, shut out the refractions of himself that sniped _pitiful_ and _foolish_ and _weak_. He shook himself, focused only on the hard lines of his brother and the sweat-slip of their skin and the rumble-roar of thunder in his ears. He wound the world down to himself and his craving, his pleasure turned bright and excruciating like balancing on dagger points.

If Thor denied him again, Loki resolved to hurl them both into the next supernova this pathetic space barge drifted past.

There was no response; after a stuttering moment Loki wondered if Thor had even heard him. But then the hand still gouging into his hipbone reached down and took hold of Loki. The grip was open enough for him to thrust in and out but just a hair’s breadth too loose. His shoulder joints throbbed with the stretch of his arms as he tried to rip his tangled doublet in half, tried to free himself from this dazzling torture. He could feel the Sakaarian stitching finally start to give just as a scorch coiled from Thor’s wrist to the circle of his hand around Loki’s cock.

Loki could not chase a full stroke through the lightening before he was coming, shaking and sobbing and mauled vicious by it. He spent everywhere: coating Thor’s hand, splattering across his stomach and onto the already-stained metal in front of them. A cluster of phrases—Asgardian, Midgardian, and a kaleidoscope of others that he had gathered throughout his exiles—choked out of him and he went boneless, plucked like a bowstring while Thor’s fury built behind him.

“You know, I should toy with you as you did me. I should tease you to the peak of oblivion and leave you there to shatter.” Loki’s chest heaved; he dropped his head back onto Thor’s shoulder and tensed his thighs. “But I am a benevolent god—am I not, brother?”

“Ah, gods, _brother_ —” Thor crushed Loki to him, sank his teeth into the nape of Loki’s neck. His cock pulsed between Loki’s legs, release flooding down to Loki’s knees and pooling in the folds of his leggings. They remained bound up in each other—breath catching and skin cooling in the strange artificial vent-breeze—for a glue-slow minute.

With a lazy hand Thor spread the sticky-tack of Loki’s come, streaked it above the thick thatch of hair matted between Loki’s legs. The other hand tugged at Loki’s bindings, pulled them by the sleeves until the fabric fell to the floor in a muffled heap.

“Turn around.”

The poisonous voices—mercifully deafened by the rush of his climax—returned, the shadows reflected in dark glass that reminded Loki that he was the one stripped and defiled. He was the one carved open—the one who let himself be carved open, as he ever did, by Thor—and he was the one who had squandered all of his advantages for this fleeting thing.

_Loki, Loki, never able to abstain from momentary gratification—this is why you will always and ever fail._

He grit his teeth and shuffled around, jaw set against Thor’s scrutiny or shame or patronizing charity. He moved to pull his leggings up—to preserve some decorum despite the mess that dripped down his body—but Thor stayed his hands and instead dropped to his knees in front of Loki.

Before he could grasp his brother’s scheme, Thor began licking stripes up the inside of Loki’s thighs, on the underside of his balls and along his flaccid cock. He did not linger, but continued on to the notches of Loki’s hips and the planes of his stomach. He was careful, thorough in his cleaning as his beard rasped across over-sensitive tracks of skin. Loki noticed a few new cracks of blue that Thor paid particular attention to.

Thor paused, panted against Loki’s belly button and looked up at him. There he was—the golden brother, the true son of Odin, the King of New Asgard—kneeling at Loki’s feet. Untricked, without coercion. Staring at Loki clear and vast and deeper than the cosmic veins of Yggdrasil and it was a ploy, it had to be a ploy, some new shackles for Loki to chain himself in but—

But in this held-breath between them, Loki did not care.

He buried his hands in the spikes of hair crowning the top of Thor’s head—the only length he had left to grab—and yanked him up into a greedy kiss. It was an intimacy that had been scarce once they were grown out of their sleepy boyhood, one that Thor would laugh off in the heat of their post-battle debaucheries. One that Loki had learned quickly to stop seeking without ever fully excising the need.

Thor had brushed him away then but now he folded Loki in his arms, let him take and take and met him every time. It was sloppy—frantic and deprived—full of too much tongue and teeth and Thor still tasted of sweetfruit and summer rain and Loki loved, he loved, he _loved_.

Loki drew back, chewed at Thor’s lower lip then let it go. “Are you satisfied?”

“No.” Thor’s mouth quirked up; he pressed their foreheads together and latched his fingers at the small of Loki’s back.  “Are you?”

Something flashed in the jewel-sharp blackness beyond the broad window: a distant storm far (for now) from their shores. Loki watched it flicker into infinity then turned back to his brother; Thor was lit by a fierce, earnest smile that thawed at the ice in his blood.

Loki smirked—only half-sly—and chased that wild shine. “Never.”


End file.
